Parmalat is faced daily with the daunting task of monitoring and managing their distribution and delivery networks. Getting an order to its destination on time and as ordered and expected every time was challenging. With a multitude of variables that include everything from hazardous travel conditions, to a disorganized cross dock, to communications breakdown between company and shipper, the possibilities for errors in the delivery process were constant. Distribution and Delivery departments were burdened with paperwork, especially given that each document has to be separately handled and processed. It was costly and time consuming business; their paper based systems were inherently slow regarding document distribution, storage and retrieval. Continuing to rely on the current physical document process, particularly when key documents become ignored or overlooked, misplaced, accidentally thrown away or lost potentially exposes the company to legal risk every day. Parmalat dairy, in Canada and Australia processes over 40,000 deliveries monthly; each evening copies of daily delivery notes are collected and sent to the Customer Service department for sorting and filing. With many locations and drivers, the hundreds and thousands of manifests, delivery notes and proof of delivery documents often get misplaced, misfiled or returned late. The volume of paperwork alone that’s generated daily as a result of the in and out processes, generates a small mountain of paper requiring physical storage- even for smaller distribution networks. An enormous task, requiring a great deal of care and accuracy. To allow their business to expand, they implemented a Proof of Delivery solution from Connectis. The key results were faster deliveries, improved trace-ability and optimized customer service.

The Solution

After a considerable time reviewing and testing competitive vendor offerings, Parmalat confirmed after the Connectis POC that their investigation was over – they’d found their solution. In the weeks that followed, Connectis Group worked closely with Parmalat and produced a Solution Definition to cooperatively define the deliverable requirements for the business logic and capture development work required to deliver the ready to use solution. The system delivered solution included a Fujitsu scanner for two processing centres, client server Artsyl docAlpha document capture software, MaxxVault document management system across multiple cities to archive the digital documents and captured business document meta-data, plus considerable custom services to cause the documents to follow the define process flow with validations. The automation streamlined the Parmalat Proof of Delivery (POD) validation process. The systems’ easy to use scan / capture software matched document detail and dramatically reduced the handling paperwork headache regardless of the document volume. Invoices are now effortlessly combined with POD’s and quickly made available across the organisation for accounts, billing, archiving and queries whilst missing POD’s are automatically flagged for follow up by the appropriate user. The combined docAlpha MaxxVault system also enabledParmalat Accounts and CSR staff to view completed PODs including supporting and linking documentation over the web without having to manually search for them individually. Physical paper was no longer required for retrieval and can be optionally destroyed, further reducing paper storage costs.

The Connectis solution would also trigger an email notification to be sent to the Customer Services Operators Outlook inbox for CSR operator that would be responsible for resolving issues related to documents that were identified as “Partial Delivery or needed further attention” (missing deliveries etc.). The operator could then take the appropriate corrective action or escalate the problem to a Manager if needed. Now, if Management or CSR’s have to resolve an issue, all the associated documents are instantly accessible regardless which location they are and can further send document to be sent to a printer, fax or to be mailed directly to a customer or supplier,thereby speeding the process and dramatically reducing the exception handling time.